[Peace-discuss] Bad craziness (II)

[C. G. Estabrook]

[I posted something from the Brit press yesterday on the "zany" Brigadier
General Mark Kimmitt, the Deputy Director for Coalition Operations, "who
specialises in steely-eyed determination" and "likes to illustrate his
answers with homilies drawn from the home life of the Kimmitt family."  
Like Bush, these people (our leaders) are easy to make fun of, but we're
reminded (by lefti.blogspot.com) that it's a murderous zaniness. Here's
Kimmit's (and Bush's) effect on someone else's home life. --CGE]


    "There may have been some kind of celebration. Bad people have
celebrations, too."
    - Disgusting liar Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, covering up the brutal
murder of 45 Iraqi civilians at the hands of the U.S. military

Gen. Kimmitt claimed "There was no evidence of a wedding: no decorations,
no musical instruments found, no large quantities of food or leftover
servings one would expect from a wedding celebration." All of it, lies.
Despicable, disgusting lies. Three days ago the Los Angeles Times talked
to the musicians who were there, that is, the ones who survived, and
provided these details:

    "The musicians' deaths are hard to dispute. They were being mourned
Thursday by hundreds of relatives in the run-down Hurriya neighborhood of
Baghdad where they lived. Relatives passed around business cards that
showed the musicians with their instruments and carried a phone number for
a recording studio in Syria.

    "Dulaimi, the musician, described a similar sense of shock. His came
after he saw the Americans leave, when he walked back to the village.

    "'When I came back to the site after the helicopters left -- it was
early morning, getting light. I found all of my friends were dead,' he
said, his voice incredulous as he talked about his seven companions from
Baghdad.

    "'We have played together for three years,' he said. 'We learn this
old style of music from our fathers. It is handed from one to another.'

    "As he helped other survivors wrap the dead in blankets for burial, he
said, he saw the two tabla drums, the violin, the flute, the two organs
and the tambourine he and his friends had brought with them.

    "'They were broken in pieces, burned,' he said. 'We had leaned our
instruments against the wall of the house ready to pack in the car. We had
planned to leave at 6 a.m. for Baghdad.'"

Gen. Kimmitt would no doubt accuse Dulaimi of lying. But amazingly, AP has
now obtained a two-hour video of the wedding which proves conclusively
that Kimmitt is lying through his teeth:

    "The bride arrives in a white pickup truck and is quickly ushered into
a house by a group of women. Outside, men recline on brightly colored silk
pillows, relaxing on the carpeted floor of a large goat-hair tent as boys
dance to tribal songs.

    "The dead included the cameraman, Yasser Shawkat Abdullah, hired to
record the festivities.

    "Video that APTN [Associated Press Television News] shot a day after
the attack shows fragments of musical instruments, pots and pans and
brightly colored beddings used for celebrations, scattered around the
bombed out tent.

    "An AP reporter and photographer, who interviewed more than a dozen
survivors a day after the bombing, were able to identify many of them on
the wedding party video -- which runs for several hours."

It's one thing when press flacks like Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan
play cute "spin the news" games with the press, dodging an answer here,
shading the truth there. But the out-and-out lies of Gen. Kimmitt go far
beyond the usual b.s. flung by people like Fleischer and McClellan. They
are despicable lies, designed to slander the reputations of innocent Iraqi
civilians who were brutally slaughtered by the U.S. troops...

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